


The Handyman

by WordsAreTrulyBeautiful



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fluff, Handyman John Watson, M/M, No Smut, Short One Shot, daddy kink?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-03
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-13 06:02:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13564371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WordsAreTrulyBeautiful/pseuds/WordsAreTrulyBeautiful
Summary: 221B Baker Street is having some issues only a handyman could fix... or is it?





	The Handyman

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a short little one-shot that I found on my laptop. I just scanned it after finding it, so I apologize for any SPaG mistakes. I hope you enjoy this brief little fluff piece!

Maggots had eaten their way through most of the lamb’s head, but Sherlock was certain there would be the damning evidence he needs for his next clue somewhere hidden amongst the rotting flesh. He peeled back a flap of mutilated skin and cast a sharp eye across every part. There was something off about this section. It was something Sherlock couldn’t pinpoint yet. He knew, however, that it was only a matter of looking in the right part. The answers were there. He’d have the name of the murderer for Lestrade my afternoon tea.

“Sherlock!” Mrs.Hudson cried.

He ignored her. Another flap of skin was moved, and Sherlock tilted his head to scrutinize the work of the blade.

“Sherlock!”

A serrated knife, but too dull. The murderer had to work harder to cut the flesh but was clearly in a hurry.

“ _Sherlock_!”

A substance on the cut. Sherlock swiped it up with a single long finger. He brought it close to his eye and frowned. He sniffed it. Leftover residue from a marker. Licorice scented.

Sherlock paused. The murderer had a child. No. A niece or nephew. Perhaps even a close godchild or family friend’s child. The residue was from a child’s scented marker. The child used the murder weapon to cut the marker tip. The tip probably flattened or went dull. Irrelevant. What wasn’t irrelevant? It was a childproof serrated knife. One of those that comes in back to school packs. The murderer did have a child? No. The murderer was a guardian to a child. Or babysitting.

“Sherlock, is it so hard to take a _second_ to answer me when I’m calling you? You’re the one who demanded I call the plumber so immediately,” Mrs. Hudson said in exasperation as she entered the living room and walked to the kitchen.

“Busy,” Sherlock replied, already pulling his phone to text Lestrade.

“What about that leak?”

“Still leaking.”

“I suppose you want me to show him to the shower?”

Sherlock was fairly sure he nodded or hummed or something. He couldn’t be sure because he’d just thought of ten more possibilities for the murder, and this lamb head was going to prove or disprove eight of them.

“Right this way, Mr. Watson,” Mrs. Hudson said.

The footsteps on the stairs indicated a man. Far shorter than Sherlock. Average build. He was following Mrs. Hudson up the stairs with a toolbox. A heavy one. Sherlock ignored the sounds of the tools shifting around in the toolbox as he rotated the lamb’s head.

“Is that a lamb’s head?”

Why do people state the obvious? Sherlock ignored the plumber.

“Oh, just ignore him. I do,” Mrs. Hudson told the man.

Sherlock let a small smile grace his lips at that.

“O-kay,” the man said, as Sherlock bent his head and sniffed at a dull grey tinted area on the lamb.

The man dropped into a squat behind Sherlock as Mrs. Hudson stood to his side. He opened the cupboard door under the kitchen sink, which if he cared, Sherlock would have warned him about. Water flooded onto the floor, and Mrs. Hudson fretted. Sherlock felt the towel under his feet soak and his socks, apparently training to be a sponge, absorb more of the water than the towel.

“Ah. I think I see the problem,” the plumber said.

“It’s not too bad, I hope?” Mrs. Hudson asked lightly.

“No, it’s a fairly simple fix. I should be done in about ten minutes.”

“Wonderful. I’ll go put the kettle on and have a cup of tea and a couple of biscuits ready waiting for you downstairs.”

“Thank you. That’s very kind of you,” the plumber replied as Mrs. Hudson made her way out the kitchen and down the stairs, while Sherlock frowned at the lamb’s head and hoped the man would work in silence.

The lamb’s head had something stuck behind the eye socket. Sherlock picked up his small electric saw (which Anderson always compared to an automated pizza cutter because Anderson was an idiot), and started cutting into the lamb’s skull.

“How do you stand the smell?” the plumber asked.

“Used to it,” Sherlock replied as he turned the saw and started cutting again.

“What kind of job do you do where you’re used to the smell of a rotting lamb’s head?” the plumber laughed.

“Not lamb’s head specifically, but rotten flesh. Rather common.”

The plumber was quiet. Sherlock figured he’d managed to scare another person away, and celebrated by making another cut.

“So what job do you do?”

Sherlock sighed. “I’m a consulting detective for Scotland Yard, and I’m quite busy solving a murder so if you would shut up and just do your job it would be appreciated.”

Silence. Blissful silence. The man might break another part of his sink or charge extra to spite him for it, but at least Sherlock had the silence he needed to get this done.

“Get many cases of murdered lambs?”

Sherlock _refused_ to laugh.

“It’s not a lamb’s murder I’m investigating. Well, sort of. It’ll help. The lamb is evidence. In the murder of an actual human being. Two in fact.”

“Oh.”

“There is something in the lamb’s eye socket, shoved hard through where the animal’s eye was before it was removed postmortem. Whatever was shoved in there has been pushed too far back for me to extract this way. I suspect mishandling of evidence caused this because Scotland Yard is full of incompetent morons that make me wonder how London hasn’t fallen into mass murdering chaos,” Sherlock explained for no other reason than he liked to show off and hadn’t done so for at least three hours when Mrs. Hudson was last in to serve him some tea and remind him that she was his landlady not his housekeeper.

“What’s in the eye socket?”

“Well, if I had some peace and quiet then maybe I’d have been able to focus on extracting this evidence instead of –“

Sherlock turned around and his words died on his tongue. What was he going to say? How did he formulate words anyway? What happened to his brain? Blank. Utterly blank. Lights on but no one was home.

The man standing in front of Sherlock was doing a lot of things to Sherlock that he had only seen happen to other people, occur on telly, and read in books. If Sherlock were capable of it, he’d check for pupil dilation, take his pulse and blood pressure, and check to see if his lungs were still functioning.

He was an older man. Older than Sherlock but not by _that_ much. Several years. Silver blonde hair swept back in a specifically styled ‘careless’ fashion that had no right looking like something out of one of those ridiculous fashion magazines Mrs. Hudson loved to read. A handsome face that told Sherlock in his youth, this man was the definition of _the boy next door_. A pair of deep blue eyes that Sherlock found himself terrified to find was actually the most mesmerizing sight he had yet to come across. Slim torso, with a shirt that fits well but not nearly as well as a tailor-made one, which Sherlock had to bite his tongue from offering to have made for him just so he could see the man in it. The shirt sleeves did not hide the muscular arms, and Sherlock’s mind deducted the man had a strict exercise regime that he did every day. It paid off.

What was it that the kids called it? A MILF? Sherlock was positive this man was a DILF. He would certainly call him one. Sherlock was too caught off guard to do anything but register the recognition of jealousy towards his wife.

Wait.

No ring on his finger.

Ex-Wife? Girlfriend? Single? There was no chance this man was single. But what if he was?

Sherlock licked his lips. When had his mouth gone dry? This was actually something that happened? Wasn’t it just hyperbole in retellings of romantic meetings? He’d have to look into this. Research at least. Maybe some experimentation with saliva.

The man was smiling at him.

“My names John Watson,” the man said.

“Holmes. Sherlock Holmes,” Sherlock replied, brain rebooting.

The man smiled. All efforts of rebooting were nullified.

“I’ve just about finished up here, actually,” John said, and it took far too long for Sherlock to realize he was talking about the leaking sink.

“Right.”

“Think you could get that evidence out by the time I finish? I’d love to find out what it is. Maybe it’ll solve the murder,” John smiled, his eyes not leaving Sherlock.

“Yeah.”

John’s eyes crinkled at the sides when he smiled wider and Sherlock worried if Mycroft would have him killed if Sherlock’s heart stopped and he died at the sight. Thankfully (or not. Sherlock wasn’t sure), John went back to his work, squatting down and picking up a wrench from the toolbox.

Sherlock’s eyes dropped to John’s backside. He wondered if Mrs. Hudson made enough tea for him to have a cup because Sherlock’s mouth felt as dry as the desert. He stared.

“I have to say, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I’ll be really impressed if you manage to solve the case before I leave,” John said with a playful challenge in his voice.

Suddenly, Sherlock _had_ to solve this case. Immediately.

He turned back to the lamb head and picked up the saw. He made one final cut before pulling off the piece of skull. Inside the lamb’s head were maggots and a tiny piece of something else. Sherlock picked up a long pair of tweezers and plucked out the piece.

Glass. Stained glass. A shard of it almost perfectly cut. Sherlock knew this stained glass.

Sherlock whipped out his phone.

_Murderer is the church organist. Planned to sell stained glass window but removal went wrong. Be careful when arresting. Takes care of niece after school. –SH_

“Done,” John said as Sherlock hit send.

The tools were placed back in the box, and the lid snapped shut. John stood with a sigh and Sherlock froze in anticipation.

“Well? Find anything interesting?”

“Solved the case, actually,” Sherlock said, and was his voice unsteady _?_

“Really?”

John sounded surprised. Sherlock held the tweezers with the stained glass up for him to see. He both heard and _felt_ John approach. Sherlock forced himself not to freeze when John came to a stop right behind him. John leaned in, and Sherlock was positive the man had to have heard his breath catch as Sherlock felt the body heat on him.

“That’s how you solved a murder?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

Sherlock turned to look at John and was surprised to see fascination on his face.

“Church’s glass window got broken. They replaced it with some stained glass they thought looked good but had little value. Turned out it was a priceless piece of stained glass thought to be lost for the past three hundred years that was going through an underground dealing. Ended up in the church’s window. One of the dealers went undercover as the church organist and tried to remove the glass. Didn’t work. Tried to stage it as an everyday act of vandalism and hide it from his boss. Boss found out. Sent someone to deal with him in his home. He attacked and killed them with his niece’s childproof serrated knife,” Sherlock rattled off, eyes locked on John and absorbing every detail about his face.

“How did you know it was a child’s knife?”

“Marker residue mixed with human blood on a serrated but dull knife. Too dull to be anything but a childproof blade. He used the knife on his would-be killer, probably grabbed it because it was nearby, and then on the lamb to hide the slice of stained glass.”

“Amazing,” John said, and he sounded like he meant it.

“The marker was liquorice,” Sherlock added and cursed himself for adding something so pointless, but when John laughed and his eyes sparkled blue Sherlock praised himself instead.

“Really amazing,” John said, shaking his head in awe.

Sherlock’s eyes dropped to his lips as John said the words and he did not understand why this man was capable of having this effect on him, and he couldn’t find a single reason to care. Sherlock didn’t like not understanding something, and usually, he made sure to figure it out or hate the thing on principle. As sure as he was that Mycroft secretly had a stash of Cadbury Flakes in his bedside drawer, Sherlock knew that even if he could never figure out John Watson, he could never hate him. He also knew he’d make damn sure to put every effort into figuring out John Watson.

“Tea’s ready! Sherlock, I’ve made some extra if you’d like some,” Mrs. Hudson called.

“Shall we?” John asked, eyes turning to Sherlock.

“What?”

John smiled. “Tea?”

“Oh, right. Yes.”

Sherlock stood up abruptly, chair scraping back in a harsh sound. John’s eyes slowly travelled up his body. Sherlock felt incredibly self-conscious and tried to hold back from tugging at his sleeve or adjusting his stance to be sure he was standing up perfectly straight and confident.

“After you,” John gestured towards the door.

Sherlock reluctantly turned away and started walking to the door, but caught sight of the tongue that darted out to wet John’s lips.

Downstairs, Mrs. Hudson had a cup of tea waiting for them with two biscuits each. John sat beside Sherlock as Mrs. Hudson stirred sugar into her own tea at the counter.

Sherlock watched as John took a bite out of his biscuit, his eyes locked on his mouth. He watched John’s throat swallow. He followed John’s hand to it’s journey to the teacup, and then as they brought the cup to his lips. His gaze transferred from hands to lips as John took a mouthful.

A small, satisfied moan came from John as he expressed his appreciation of the tea. It was merely polite, and Sherlock was sure that John probably wasn’t that thankful for the scalding hot cup of tea on an already rather warm day, but he thanked etiquette for allowing him to hear that sound nonetheless. Sherlock had a wonderful idea about conduction a long, invasive experiment on how best to extract such sounds from John Watson.

“Drink your tea or it’ll get cold, young man,” Mrs. Hudson scolded.

Sherlock blindly brought the cup to his mouth and took a mouthful, burning the roof of his mouth. He didn’t react as he was currently watching another mouthful of tea be worked down John’s throat.

“Sherlock?”

“Yes?” he replied automatically.

“Are you all right? You’ve gone all flushed. Oh, I hope you aren’t coming down with anything,” Mrs. Hudson said. She turned to John, who was taking another bite of his biscuit. “He’s always in a terrible mood when he’s ill. He’s like a child, really,” she laughed as she informed him.

Sherlock wondered if John would be able to tell someone being flushed from someone blushing of embarrassment. He hoped not. John’s blue eyes looked up at him. A smirk. Perhaps so. Was that better or worse?

“I should call Lestrade,” Sherlock said, getting up before he registered what he’d said. He just had to escape those eyes and that mouth before he did something that would really embarrass him. Like, ask him to out.

“I should be going as well,” John said, pushing his chair back.

His tea was half finished and he still had a biscuit left. Sherlock wondered if he was staying just for him, and then that turned to excited hope.

“Thank you for the tea. I’ll send the bill within the week, yeah?”

“That’ll be fine. Thank you for coming on such short notice.”

John walked passed Sherlock on his way to the door as Sherlock stood with his phone in his hand and the screen still black. John stopped in front of Sherlock and smiled.

“Give me a ring if that sink plays up again,” John said. Sherlock nodded. “Or if anything else needs fixing,” he added. Sherlock nodded again. “Or…” John gave him an appreciative once over, licking his lips in what Sherlock was sure had to be a clear sign of invitation. He was a detective for fuck's sake, shouldn’t he know this with certainty? Where was his brain at the moment?! “Or anything,” John said and _winked_.

Sherlock watched John as he left, his phone forgotten in his hand.

As the door closed, Sherlock asked Mrs. Hudson, “What plumbers does he work for?”

“It’s his own handyman business,” Mrs. Hudson said as she cleared the tea.

“The name?”

“Daddy Can Fix It.”

Sherlock’s mind went blank.

“Pardon?”

“Oh, I know. The name tickled me pink. He’s not got children, though. I asked him last time, you see. Apparently, he used to work for a company and he left to start his own. All his friends used to call him the dad of the group since he was always so handy and such, so he thought he’d name his company that for a bit of a laugh. Mind you, he’d make one sexy dad. If I was a few decades younger…”

Sherlock swallowed. Sexy dad indeed.

“He fixes all sorts of things?”

“If there’s something John Watson can’t fix, then it’s unfixable.”

Sherlock hummed with interest and went back upstairs, John Watson swimming around his head as various feelings Sherlock rarely felt and usually paid no attention to started swirling inside of him. He started plotting as the memory of John’s wink replayed in his head.

* * *

John Watson had come to 221 B Baker Street fourteen times in the past two and a half weeks. He had fixed the sink twice, the dishwasher once, installed new kitchen cabinets, retiled the backsplash _twice_ , repaired several walls on four separate occasions from bullet holes, unblocked the fireplace, installed new shelving in the living room, repaired the window, and redid the wiring (which was appalling). Then this morning he had a call about a draw being locked.

“Yes, I don’t know how it happened. The draw is just completely locked up,” Sherlock said.

“Right. Well, from what I can tell, it’s been locked but then something has jammed the lock. I’ll have to unjam it so I can pick the lock,” John said as he was once again squatted in front of a chest of draws that Sherlock had damaged right after calling him up that morning.

“Oh?” Sherlock said with feigned surprise.

John reached for a tool in his toolbox. Sherlock watched him work, pretending to be interested in learning what he was doing to fix the problem when John turned and flashed a smile at him, and going back to appreciate the view once John’s focus was back on the draw.

When the draw was fixed, John sighed and stood. He smiled at Sherlock.

“All done.”

“Oh.”

That was quicker than Sherlock thought.

“Is there anything else that needs fixing while I’m here?”

Sherlock searched his brain. There had to be _something_. Sherlock was growing more and more desperate to see John. He stayed up plotting new jobs for him to come do. He bought new cabinets for fuck's sake. There had to be something John could do to get him to stay. What about new tiles in the shower?

The shower!

“The shower seems to be acting up, actually.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I showered this morning and it went hot and cold all throughout it.”

“Well lead the way,” John smiled.

Sherlock guided him to the bathroom. He opened the door for him to go in, and as John made for the shower, Sherlock realized this wasn’t the best plan. There wasn’t anything wrong with the shower. At least before Sherlock had made sure there was something for John to actually fix. But this? He’d see through it in a heartbeat.

“Is the water pressure all right?”

“Uh…”

John turned on the shower and the water came on fine. He turned the shower to the heat that he clearly usually took his own on. Sherlock was secretly delighted to see it was the same heat he liked his on.

John stuck a hand into the stream of water.

“Seems fine,” he mused.

“It takes a few minutes. It’s usually further into the shower that it plays up.”

“I thought it was all throughout?”

Sherlock froze for a second before replying, “Once it starts playing up it keeps playing up.”

John hummed.

They waited for five minutes for the shower to play up. Then ten. Then fifteen. Sherlock knew the shower was fine. He was pretty sure John knew as well. Twenty minutes passed.

The bathroom was steaming up. John had a light shine of sweat on him. Sherlock wasn’t sure if it was the heat of the shower or of John that was making him hot. The mirror was completely steamed up, and Sherlock hoped John would wait another five minutes.

“How long are your showers usually?” John asked on minute twenty-seven.

“I like long showers.”

“Are you sure you’re not just using all the hot water?”

“Positive.” John nodded. “Unless you want to check the boiler to see if that’s the problem,” Sherlock added quickly.

A smile sprang to John’s lips.

“Check the boiler, huh?”

“I think it might be the source of the problem,” Sherlock said. John was smiling and nodding. His arms were crossed, emphasizing his muscles. Sherlock was sure the bathroom was getting dangerously hot to be standing in with the door closed. “Come to think of it, the water in the sink goes hot and cold as well.”

“Just remember that now, did you?” John asked, amusement in his voice.

Sherlock nodded.

John looked around the bathroom, little beads of perspiration dripping down his temple, and his light blue shirt clinging to his body. Sherlock licked his lips.

“The boiler is in the basement,” Sherlock said. “I’m sure Mrs. Hudson wouldn’t mind –“

John was laughing. His shoulders were shaking, and he was smiling so wide and pretty that Sherlock’s heart stopped for a second. Out of fear that he’d been caught out or by the pure beauty of it, he didn’t know.

He’d made John laugh many times before. They talked each time he came and fixed something. He asked about cases. He wasn’t as idiotic as everyone else. Or at least, Sherlock didn’t mind the times when John did not observe or understand something so easily as he did. Sherlock liked that John liked the work he did. He liked that John was impressed with his skills. He liked that John knew a lot about a lot of things because of his handyman job and his general curiosity. He liked that he was even helpful on some cases. He liked that he didn’t think he was weird and still talked to him when Sherlock deduced something to shred in a second or had a human hand sitting on the kitchen table in a jar. He liked that he was the epitome of every lustful dream Sherlock could, has, and would ever have and he was confident in himself but not vain. He liked that he made him laugh. He liked that he seemed to like talking to him. He liked that he was so normal yet to extraordinary. He liked _him_.

He liked John Watson.

Was this infatuation or lust or falling in love? Was this all three? Was this mutual? Was this what everyone felt? This was maddeningly glorious.

John, still laughing, turned that blue gaze and those smiling lips to Sherlock.

“You know,” he started, lowering his voice to a whisper and leaned into Sherlock, causing the heat in the bathroom to spike to near fainting levels, “you _could_ just ask me out to dinner.”

Sherlock blinked.

John smiled wider in amusement.

“What?”

“Well, it’s got to be easier than making all these jobs for me to come do. It must be tough work jamming a piece of steel into such a small lock like that,” John joked and Sherlock felt himself blushing hard for being caught out.

“How long have you known?” he asked.

“I had a feeling when I came to fix the dishwasher, but I was positive when you suddenly decided to get new kitchen counters,” John said with a silly grin.

“Oh.”

“I figured I should bring up an actual date since you’ve clearly run out of ideas,” John said as he motioned to the shower.

“And you’d not be averse to the idea of a… date?” Sherlock asked lightly.

“I’ve been standing in a boiling hot bathroom with you for the past half hour while knowing perfectly well there isn’t a thing wrong with this shower,” John smiled.

“Oh.”

John was waiting, watching Sherlock. Sherlock wasn’t used to being watched back. He cleared his throat.

“So… Dinner? Tonight?”

“I’d love to,” John beamed and Sherlock actually felt his knees weaken a little bit.

“Great. I know the perfect place. It’s called Angelo’s.”

 


End file.
